| Title: | John Banville - "Beckett's Last Words" |
|---|---|
| Date: | Wednesday 20 Feb 2008 |
| Venue: | Theatre P Newman (Arts) Building |
| Organiser: | Philosophy Society |
| Time: | 19:00 |
| Contact: | Stephen Cadwell |
| Audience: | All Welcome |
John Banville - "Beckett's Last Words"
Winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize, John Banville will deliver a lecture on "Beckett's Last Words" at University College Dublin on Wednesday 20 February 2008. The lecture is part of a series of lectures hosted by the UCD Philosophical Society.
Born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945, Banville attended the Christian Brothers School, Wexford, and St Peter's College, Wexford, before working for Aer Lingus in Dublin which gave him to opportunity to travel around the globe. In 1970 he published Long Lankin, a collection of short stories, followed by the novel Nightspawn in 1971, and the novel Birchwood in 1973. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction his 1976 fictional portrait of the 15th-century Polish astronomer Dr Copernicus, the first in a series which explores the lives of eminent scientists. In 1981, the second novel in the series, about the 16th-century German astronomer Kepler, won the Guardian Fiction Prize. The Newton Letter: An Interlude (1982), is about an academic writing a book about the mathematician Sir Isaac Newton.
In 1989 he published The Book of Evidence which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction and won the Guinness Peat Aviation Book Award. Following this he published Ghosts (1993) and Athena (1995) forming a loose trilogy. His 1997 novel, The Untouchable is about the art historian and spy Anthony Blunt. In 2000 he published Eclipse, in 2002 Shroud, and in 2003 Prague Pictures: Portrait of a City.
His latest novel The Sea, published in 2005, won the Man Booker Prize.
John Banville lives in Dublin.
